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Sunday, September 14, 2014

IT Act To Be Amended To Accommodate E-Commerce Concerns

Information technology Act 2000 (IT Act 2000)
carries provisions pertaining to e-governance and e-commerce.
However, IT Act 2000 has outlives its importance and it is high time
to enact dedicated laws for e-governance and e-commerce in India.
This though of dedicated laws brings discomfort and uneasiness to the
Indian government and hence it always chooses the easy path of bring
piecemeal amendments in the existing laws. Of course, this is not a
productive exercise in the long run and it brings unforeseen and
unproductive results.

Now once again Indian government has decided to
amend the IT Act 2000 to accommodate the e-commerce concerns. We have
no dedicated e-commerce
laws in India and barring few provisions in the IT Act,
2000, e-commerce in India is largely unregulated. As a result
regulatory violation by Indian e-commerce websites is in abundance.
In fact, e-commerce websites of India are under enforcement
directorate scanner.

Indian government intends to streamline e-commerce
laws in India by bringing a law in the form of Communications
Convergence Bill. The government plans to modify the IT Act, 2000 to
provide legal recognition for transactions carried out using
electronic data interchange and other means of electronic
communications in a more explicit manner. It also aims to draft a set
of globally acceptable guidelines to increase the legal
predictability for e-commerce and adopt the United Nations General
Assembly's (UNGA) recommended Model
Law on Electronic Commerce (MLFC).

This is a good policy decision by Indian government
and it would bring uniformity and legal certainty among e-commerce
entrepreneurs of India.